Lee Yeongdo (; born 1972) is a Korean novelist known for his work in fantasy and science fiction genre. He is best known for his Dragon Raja series of fantasy novels which is also his debut work, serialised on an online forum from 1997 and published on its completion in 1998. At the time Dragon Raja was first published, Korean readership for fantasy genre(specifically its medievalist form) was considered unsubstantial and unaccounted for by press. But Dragon Raja has sold close to 2 million books in 4 languages. This was a significant feat for the fantasy genre in Korea where the annual circulation of domestic literature and fiction titles as a whole, ranges between 12~20 million copies. Dragon Raja's success has prompted a rapid growth of Korean fantasy and science fiction genre, and contributed to the growing acceptance of web fiction, referred to as "Internet literature", both by the country's general public and literary world. Lee is currently one of the best-selling fantasy writers in Korea. Background Early life Lee was born in 1972 in Busan, South Korea, the first child of two brothers. When Lee was 2 years old, his family moved to Masan in South Gyeongsang Province where he has lived since. As a child he read heavily in various subjects. In 1991 he entered Kyungnam University where he studied Korean language and literature. He started writing seriously from 1993, but didn't think that he would be writing novels. Beginnings of the "typer" Mid-1990s were when fantasy and science fiction literature was just being introduced to Korea. Lee remembered that "if you asked people what is fantasy, they would say 'Isn't that like western martial arts'" in a 2008 interview. He found the genre attractive and decided to try a story with it. It was also when various online service providers similar to CompuServe in United States (but different in its interface being text-only) were emerging. Lee joined one such provider, Hitel, to start posting on its Serial forum what would be the first chapters of Dragon Raja. Lee serialized Dragon Raja from October 1997 to April 1998, referring to himself as "typer" as he typed and didn't pen his work. The chapters quickly gained popularity and Lee's readers began waiting online for Lee to post the new ones. Lee usually posted his works well after midnight, and Lee's readers began calling themselves zombies, and Lee the Necromancer